Liberty redshirt sophomore Ashley Rininger earned a trio of recognitions from the Big South Conference this afternoon, including the Big South Scholar-Athlete of the Year award and berths on the first-team All-Big South and Big South All-Academic squads. Teammates Simone Brown and Mickayla Sanders were each named to the Big South All-Freshman Team.

For the third straight season, Winthrop senior guard Dequesha McClanahan was voted Big South Player of the Year. Big South regular-season champion High Point boasted the Freshman of the Year (Kaylah Keys) and Coach of the Year (DeUnna Hendrix). Meanwhile, Campbell's Kiera Gaines was named Big South Defensive Player of the Year.

Today's honors continued a couple of lengthy streaks for the Lady Flames. Liberty has now seen at least one player make the first-team All-Big South squad for 18 straight seasons and has had a representative on the Big South All-Freshman Team for six years in a row. However, this is the first time since 2002 (Katie Feenstra, Kristal Tharp and Stephanie Walker) that multiple Lady Flames have been included on the All-Freshman Team.

Rininger, a criminal justice major with a 4.0 grade-point average, is Liberty's first Big South Scholar-Athlete of the Year since Megan Frazee in 2009 and joins Elena Kisseleva (1998) as the only sophomores in program history to win this award. Rininger is on track to graduate with her bachelor's degree in May, after only three years on campus.

One of only two conference players to win three Big South Player of the Week honors (Dec. 2, Dec. 23 and Feb. 24) this season, Rininger is the Lady Flames' leader in points (14.8 ppg), rebounds (9.0 rpg), blocked shots (1.3 bpg) and field goal percentage (.545). Her 15 double-doubles this season are the most in program history by a sophomore.

Rininger enters the Big South Championship tied for the conference lead in double-doubles, while ranking second in field goal percentage, fourth in rebounding, sixth in free throw percentage (.746), sixth in blocked shots and tied for seventh in scoring.

The Lady Flames have gone 5-0 since Brown joined the starting lineup late in the season. She has made her biggest impact in the rebounding column, as the Florida native ranks fourth on the team and sixth among Big South freshmen with 4.6 rpg. Most recently, she pulled down a career-high 10 rebounds during Liberty's regular-season finale at Longwood on Saturday.

At 9.6 ppg, Sanders is the Lady Flames' second-leading scorer on the season and ranks third among conference freshmen. She boasts the highest scoring average by a Lady Flames rookie since Devon Brown posted 17.2 ppg in 2009-10.

Sanders has also made her mark from beyond the three-point arc, hitting a team-high 45 triples on the season. She ranks sixth in the Big South for three-pointers made and second for three-point field goal percentage (.363).

Liberty (19-10, 15-5 Big South) is the No. 2 seed for this week's Big South Women's Basketball Championship. The Lady Flames will match up against either No. 7 seed Presbyterian College or No. 10 seed Longwood in the quarterfinal round, Thursday at 6 p.m. at The HTC Center in Conway, S.C.